Remember that at Christmas, 77% of telephones with a fixed-rate tariff that Orange sold were iPhones! It’s amazing. I cannot say why so many other mobile telephone manufacturers have fallen so far behind and have been unable to catch-up.

I am still trying to get my head around this data point. Is it an anomaly? Is France unique or is this a Christmas-only phenomenon? Other data points also showed that iPhone is phenomenally popular in France, but this is unheard of. Would broad availability in the US also lead to >50% market share of all phones sold? Could the possibility of runaway, iPod-like, Apple monopoly of the sector be contemplated? Anecdotally, I also observed a large number of iPhones while in Terminal 3 at Heathrow.

On the other hand, iPhone only accounted for roughly 5% of the total device volume in France in Q4 (exclusivity ended in April). So, even though it's driving fixed rate plan sales, the volume contribution was not as huge as you could think. Having said that, iPhone still is the biggest smartphone in France, not by a large margin but still.

Tom Ross

Do you have source, Markus? Le Figaro wrote earlier that, for calendar 2009 in France, the iPhone achieved 50 %+ of the smartphone market and 9 % of the total phone market. In total figures, Le Figaro estimated 1.8 million iPhones sold in France in 2009.

"iPhone still is the biggest smartphone in France, not by a large margin but still"

Do you have access to research that is not publicly available?

http://asymco.wordpress.com asymco

The information Markus probably cites is public but not free (as in beer.) There are research reports which are available to those with means. I can say that Canalys publishes these detailed country-level platform estimates.